Amazon.com, Inc. Q2 2017 Earnings Send Shares Falling

Amazon Q2 2017 earnings were released after closing bell tonight, and the company reported earnings of 40 cents per share on $38 billion in net sales. Wall Street had been looking for $1.41 per share in earnings and $37.2 billion in sales. In the year-ago quarter, the online retailer and cloud giant reported earnings of $1.78 per share and $30.4 billion in revenue.

Amazon management’s guidance for the second quarter was between $35.25 billion and $37.75 billion in revenue.

Amazon Q2 2017 earnings

Amazon Q2 2017 earnings revealed North America sales of $22.4 billion, up from $17.7 billion last year. International sales rose to $11.5 billion from $9.8 billion last year. Amazon Web Services sales jumped to $4.1 billion from the year-ago quarter’s $2.9 billion. Retail subscription services rose 51% year over year to $2.2 billion.

Amazon also said that its third-annual Prime Day was its biggest shopping event ever, as more new subscribers signed up for Prime on that day than on any single day in the company’s history. More than 40 million units were sold by “hundreds of thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs,” the company said. It also stated that Prime Day was the biggest sales event ever for its own devices and brought in record sales of the Echo, Fire tablets and Kindles. The sales from Prime Day will go toward Amazon’s third-quarter total, as the event was held earlier this month.

Amazon provides Q3 guidance

For the third quarter, Amazon expects net sales of $39.25 billion to $41.75 billion, marking a 20% to 28% increase year over year.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was the world’s richest person for about half the day today as his company’s stock soared and then faltered, causing him to fall back below Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Following Amazon Q2 2017 earnings, the stock fell on the wide earnings miss, declining by as much as 1.91% to $1,026 in after-hours trades. Clearly, investors had been expecting much better results from Amazon, given how much they pushed the stock up during regular trading hours.

Author: Michelle JonesMichelle Jones was a television news producer for eight years. She produced the morning news programs for the NBC affiliates in Evansville, Indiana and Huntsville, Alabama and spent a short time at the CBS affiliate in Huntsville. She has experience as a writer and public relations expert for a wide variety of businesses. Michelle has been with ValueWalk since 2012 and is now our editor-in-chief. Email her at Mjones@valuewalk.com.